


Anchor

by starcunning (Vannevar)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amélie Lacroix is mentioned like twice, FDNH Apocrypha, Friendship, Gen, How Tracer Got Her Groove Back, TSTTS Apocrypha, Through Struggle to the Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7464786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vannevar/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t right, her being trapped in there. Winston knew some things about isolation—like that nobody deserved it. Certainly not Tracer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchor

It wasn’t right, her being trapped in there. Winston knew some things about isolation—like that nobody deserved it. Certainly not Tracer, who he knew mostly from physio. She’d become an Agent already, and he had been a little envious. And then, when she disappeared, guilty.

There’d been no shortage of people willing to look for her when the Slipstream disappeared. Winston had volunteered anyway. Grim prospect or not, he had felt a sort of obligation: he’d seen how much less cheery the halls of the Watchpoint had become without her. Certainly his own day was much emptier of smiling faces. Maybe they’d all read one too many reports from the ecologists, and feared to show teeth around him. He tried not to think about it.

It was Lacroix who had found her, then lost her again. Mercy had been there the next time. The good doctor had given her ailment a name: chronal disassociation. When Winston had proposed the chronal baffles, Torbjörn Lindholm had agreed to helm the project, and then they’d put Tracer in the tank.

Maybe he’d have felt better about it if it were working. The baffles weren’t enough. She still slipped away, even if only for minutes at a time. Sometimes she would touch the beams of the dome, waiting to see if her hand would pass through or if she was back in sync with the universe. When she was, she ate, because none of them knew when next she’d manage it.

Winston felt like a failure.

There was a great deal of temptation to feel sorry for himself, but something in him reminded him that just because something didn’t work perfectly didn’t mean it was useless. Tracer had her months back. He would give her back her days. He kept his hands busy with other things, because he worked best while he was distracted—keeping his mind off his mind allowed ideas to foment. When they found her flight suit, Winston thought he had stumbled upon a solution. He took it to her first.

“Hey, big guy,” she greeted him. Winston wasn’t sure if the echo was from the room or a simple vocal distortion.  
“Hi,” he said. “How are you?” Then he winced. “Stupid question.”  
“I’m alright,” Tracer said. Her tone was reassuring. “Sorry I can’t spot you like usual.”  
“It’s fine,” he said, waving one broad hand. “I’ve had more important things to do than lift weights anyway.”  
“You sure?” she wondered. Her concern seemed real. So was the gentleness of her smile.  
“My partner’s in lockup anyway.” He smiled back, closed-lipped.  
“I’ll bet you could probably lift nine hundred kilos and get top marks anyway,” she giggled.  
“Not without a spot,” he said back. “I’m working on getting you out of there.”  
“Really?” Her eyes were bright, and she stood straighter than he’d seen her since they’d brought her back.  
“That was always the plan, I thought,” Winston said. “I have to show it to Doctor Lindholm, and we’ll see if he can build it.”  
“I can build anything,” said Torbjörn Lindholm. “What’re yeh filling her head with now, monkey?”  
“Hey!” said Tracer, seeming genuinely affronted.  
“I came up with something for the time problem,” Winston said, reaching up to adjust his glasses. He reached out for one of the tablets, comically small in his hands. It was an effort to log in, but a few more careful taps brought up his rough sketches and notes. He flashed them at the window, then handed it over to the senior engineer.  
The engineer chewed his beard when he was thinking. He did so then, muttering to himself in Swedish. “This is a compressor,” he said.  
“Of sorts,” Winston agreed.  
“Let’s take this to the workshop,” Lindholm instructed.  
Winston only nodded.  
“Bye, Winston,” said the girl out of time. “See you soon?”  
“See you soon,” he promised.

Torbjörn Lindholm’s workshop was built to accommodate him, and Winston found it slightly awkward. The gorilla was taller than most humans, though not always Omnics, but the Swede was an outlier on the other end. Even Winston’s usual hunch wasn’t quite enough to serve him there, and Lindholm seemed to dislike looking up to meet his eyes.  
“Shouldn’t have done that,” the engineer told him.  
“Sorry?” Winston said, scratching at the back of his neck.  
“Gone and gotten her hopes up,” Lindholm said. “Certainly you shouldn’t’ve gone down there first.”  
“I thought maybe it would encourage her,” he admitted. “Besides, I’m sure—”  
“I’m sure that’s Doctor Ziegler’s division,” Lindholm said, firmly. “Normally we don’t let trainees have the run of the lab, you know, but your last solution worked, and this seems like it may. If it doesn’t …” he began, closing his only eye. “You’re going to have to tell her that, too.”  
“I guess I earned that,” Winston said.  
“Some lessons’re harder than others,” Lindholm said. “Now, let’s have a look.”

With time on his mind, Winston found he wished he had more of it on his hands. His days became a haze of training exercises and time spent working with the other Overwatch scientists; his nights a haze of banana-flavored energy drinks, staring at formulae until they stopped making sense. It was Mercy who found him one morning, slumped over the cracked screen of his touch-responsive desk.  
“If you don’t wake up soon, you’ll miss morning muster,” she cautioned him. But her voice was warm, and her hand was gentle upon his shoulder. “Do you take coffee?”  
“I shouldn’t,” he said.  
“I have to make a pot anyway,” she admitted. “I am not at all ready for my morning, either.”  
“What are you doing down here?” Winston asked, groggily. “Sorry. I mean …”  
“Oh, no, I know. I do exist outside the medical wing, however,” she laughed. “Actually, Doctor Lindholm and I have a meeting.”  
“Oh,” he said. “About what?”  
She pursed her lips, looking thoughtful. “The side-effects of some of his recent developments. Certainly,” she added, “nothing to lose sleep over.”  
Winston’s thumb skidded over the spiderweb of cracks in the glass. “I guess you couldn’t tell me anyway,” he said.  
“Doctor Lindholm is brilliant,” Mercy said, “but I have taken oaths he has not: ‘I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being.’ Or, though they have not updated the wording, an Omnic.” She lifted her shoulders briefly. “I am here to remind him of the human cost. As for you,” she continued, “it is nice to see such concern for a teammate.”  
“Yes, ma’am,” Winston said, because he didn’t know what else to say.  
“It would be a shame if your candidacy with Overwatch were jeopardized by your absence from muster.” Her smile took the sting from the words.  
“Thank you, ma’am,” Winston said, chair clattering as he rose.  
She laughed, but not at him, stooping to pick up the chair. “Don’t worry about the glass,” she assured him, waving him off.

He didn’t, but Winston did find himself worrying about the “human cost.” It would be selfish of him to demand answers from Tracer, but he found himself standing in front of the tank anyway. It was empty. He waited until it wasn’t.  
“Kept ya waiting long, have I?” Tracer wondered, sounding fretful.  
“It’s no big deal,” Winston said, wringing his hands. “Just thought I’d check up on you.”  
“Doc’s just been through,” she said. “Or wasn’t that today?”  
“It was,” Winston nodded. “I’m not here officially.”  
“Oh,” she said. “Well, then, what’s up?”  
“Just … wanted to say hello,” he said. “I didn’t really get much further than that.”  
“S’alright, love,” she said, flopping onto the ledge just beneath the window. “How are things out there?”  
“Okay, I guess,” he said. “Spring checkpoint tomorrow. Big test.”  
“You nervous?” Tracer asked. He nodded. “Don’t be. I’m sure you’ll ace it.”  
“I hope so,” he said. “You’ve been through it. What’s it like?”  
“Not as scary as you’re making it up to be in your head,” she said with a smile. “It’s hard, sure, but you’re harder.”  
“Tell yourself that one a lot?” the scientist wondered, planting his chin in one palm.  
“How’d you guess?”  
“Sounds like the sort of thing I tell myself in front of a mirror every morning.” He paused. “How do you stay so cheerful in there?”  
Tracer frowned thoughtfully. “Do you remember,” she said, “in PE when they had us do trust falls?”  
“How could I forget?” He looked abashed. “Nobody wants to be the one who has to catch the gorilla.”  
“Well, _I_  did, didn’t I,” she said. Tracer smiled at him.  
“I seem to remember you ended up falling on your backside,” Winston said, a chuckle building low in his throat.  
“In the mud, even! But I caught you, give me credit for that, anyway. And you caught me.”  
“Of course,” he said. “It was easy.”  
“I’m trusting you lot to catch me now.”  
“Doctor Lindholm says I shouldn’t make promises,” Winston said, “but I don’t think I agree. We will, Tracer.”  
“Hey,” she said, “call me Lena, yeah?”  
“Lena.”  
She nodded, encouragingly. “Besides,” she said, “it’s not so bad. The Doc comes by often enough, and we have a chat while she runs her tests, and Amélie Lacroix stops by sometimes when she visits her husband, and now you’re here, so!”  
“I guess I am,” he chuckled.  
“Come back tomorrow and tell me all about your test, won’t you?”  
“Sure, Lena,” Winston smiled, forgetting to hide his teeth. She didn’t even bat an eye.

He came back the next day, and kept coming back until eventually Doctor Lindholm recognized his losing battle and simply allowed Winston to do a great deal of his theoretical work down in front of the tank. Tracer—Lena—nattered on while he worked, light banter that distracted him just enough to let his mind really work. He couldn’t be sure, but it felt like as they went on, Lena was able to anchor herself to the present more readily. So long as she was talking.

They built the harness in early autumn, and for the first month they still didn’t let her out of the tank. There were flickers, and adjustments made, but slowly, Lena stopped disappearing, and began to acclimate. The chronal accelerator shone like a beacon upon her chest, leaving streaks in his vision as she zipped around the track, folding her own time and unwinding it. Her laughter trailed behind her as Winston loped along. He’d need to improve his lap time before Autumn Checkpoint. He’d need to undo months of living on energy drinks and peanut butter.  
“You’re coming to the party, yeah?” Lena asked.  
“I don’t know. Isn’t it just for agents?”  
“No,” Lena said, “Amélie’s already told me all about her costume.”  
“She has?”  
“Sure,” she said as she passed him again. “It’s fancy dress. Think I’m going to go as a racecar driver. You’re my friend, you’ve _got_  to come.”  
“I am?” he said, when she was on the other side of the track again. “I will.”  
She clapped him on the shoulder. “I thought you might.”

The Watchpoint was thunderous, filled with its revelry. His moustache itched, and his pith helmet would not stay on his head, and he felt a bit foolish for coming. It seemed like Lena danced with everyone, from Jesse McCree to Amélie Lacroix. Winston was happier off to the sides, trying to keep clear of the revelers, and of Genji Shimada’s insistent camera lens.

It was Mercy who sidled up to him, filling the respectful distance between Winston and his fellow wallflower Torbjörn Lindholm.  
“She seems happy,” the surgeon said, pushing back the brim of her pointed hat.  
“I think she’s just glad to be running around again,” Winston said.  
“Or to have found her place,” Torbjörn agreed.  
“In time?” the gorilla wondered.  
“In general,” shrugged Torbjörn. “I for one am happy to see the results.”  
“So am I,” said Winston.  
“So are we all,” agreed Mercy. “I’m glad we had the opportunity to collaborate, Doctor,” she said.  
“So’m I,” Torbjörn replied. “Doctor.” He grinned.  
Shimada appeared as though out of the night, gesturing the three of them together, and Winston shook his head, backing away.  
He heard the whine of a shutter sound effect at the same time he heard the splash, and turned around to find Commander Reyes bobbing among the apples in an oversized tub.  
“Sorry!” Winston said, quickly, grabbing the other man by the lapels of his costume. He glanced around the room, from Reyes’ annoyed glower into other faces, but the rest were laughing as Strike-Commander Morrison swept off his costume’s cape so the other man could dry his face.

He found the snap of his collaborators in their costumes on his desk the next morning, inscribed _Happy Halloween, Winston!!_ in the hand he’d come to recognize as Doctor Ziegler’s. She’d drawn a smiley face with the ecnophemes.  
The note underneath was in Torbjörn’s blocky script. _For your lab, when you get it._


End file.
